THE weight of expectation at Newcastle United is becoming a heavy burden on the shoulders of Graeme Souness, who admitted he is currently enduring his most difficult spell in football management.

Saturday's defeat at Fulham saw Newcastle drop into the bottom eight of the Premiership, and with his injury list lengthening by the week, it appears things will only get worse before they get better for the former Glasgow Rangers, Liverpool and Galatasaray manager.

Shola Ameobi's imminent hip operation coupled with Stephen Carr's suspected torn stomach muscle and Titus Bramble's ankle injury compound the situation, and the fans' dream of silverware in Alan Shearer's last season now appear forlorn.

One of Souness' predecessors, Ruud Gullitt, was convinced the club was cursed, even calling in a local Catholic priest to bless the pitch with Holy Water.

The current incumbent, however, sees the problem as being more recent, even pinpointing where it all started going wrong for him and his squad.

A miserable night in the Portuguese capital in April, when a 4-1 defeat against Sporting Lisbon ended their best hopes for silverware.

According to Souness, from that moment it's been all downhill, the Magpies going on to lose by a similar scoreline in the FA Cup semi-final three days later.

"This is a club with enormous expectations and right now we can't fulfil those," admitted a candid Souness. "They're beyond us because, as we speak, we've now got 11 players injured, 11 players who would all be a big part of our team.

"We have 52,000 people pack our stadium every week. We're a big football club. There's one club in the city and it's constantly under the spotlight.

"The margins you operate in, in the Premiership, are so fine. If we had Kieron Dyer and Emre, or Emre and Scott Parker, or Michael Owen, any one of them might have made a difference at Fulham.

"I took the job 16 months ago but since playing in Lisbon we've had absolutely zero luck."

It could be argued the semi-final defeat to Manchester United was the point where it all started to go wrong between Souness and a sizeable section of the Newcastle fans.

On Saturday at Craven Cottage, however, the 5,000 or so followers felt the need to be magnanimous in defeat; the majority applauding both their manager and the team off the pitch.

That will certainly not be repeated should they lose at home to Blackburn this Saturday, and those on the receiving end of their support really didn't deserve much credit for coming second best to a strictly average Fulham team beaten at home by Orient the weekend before.

Albert Luque again refused to even flatter to deceive, Lee Bowyer was full of effort and little else and gave away possession for the umpteenth time to set up the only goal of the game, and Nolberto Solano was again worryingly uninfluential.

Both sides deserved to be booed off after a first half that was rubbish - Newcastle being more rubbish than Fulham.

The second half was an improvement and Souness at least instilled some desire in his charges with his half-time team talk.

Forced into a re-jig following Stephen Carr's injury they came out and attacked but again had little in the way of goalmouth action to show for it.

Antti Niemi flapped early on but the chance went begging, a deflected effort from Charles N'Zogbia went well wide and an ambitious 40 yard effort from Luque, easily gathered by Niemi, were the sum total before Fulham's introduction of Steed Malbranque tipped the balance in their favour.

The Belgium-born attacking midfielder brought a near post save from Shay Given after 70 minutes and, five minutes later, scored the only goal of the game.

The goal came from Newcastle's best effort of the game up to that point. Jean-Alain Boumsong's header from Solano's corner was cleared off the line by Niclas Jensen.

The home side failed to fully clear the lines and the ball eventually found its way to Bowyer. His pass out to the right, however, was easily intercepted by Jensen who played the ball out to Luis Boa Morte.

He quickly fed Brian McBride in the centre and suddenly it was three on to two with substitutes Malbranque and Collins John causing consternation for the Newcastle defenders.

McBride played in John whose low shot from the left was saved by Given only for Malbranque to rifle home the rebound.

As Newcastle pressed Heider Helguson almost made it two only to see his effort crash back off the bar, before Newcastle saw their last hope disappear with a double save from Niemi.

Substitute Michael Chopra's effort was pushed clear by Niemi to Bowyer only for a combination of Niemi and Ian Pearce to keep out the rebound.

There was a suspicion of handball but according to their manager, Newcastle's luck has well and truly run out.

"You have to be an optimist and a pessimist and I have to believe that things will turn and I believe I'm getting as much as I can out of the group of players I'm working with," said Souness.

"Unless somebody can come in and wave a magic wand to make Michael's injury a two-weeker rather than an eight or 12-weeker, and the same with (Steven) Taylor and the other ones are the same, that's what's missing and what I'm having to work with.

" I am an experienced football person. I've been doing this job for 20 years and I played a long time before that and I know that this can be a very cruel game at times - you sometimes get more than you deserve and other times you don't get what you deserve.

"I've had good times and bad times in the past, like every manager. I think in any successful manager's career you can look back to a time when he was extremely fortunate, with the players they sign, decisions in games at the right times when they were under pressure.

"Lady Luck has a part to play in management. At the moment she's not with us but she might start next Saturday.

"I have to keep believing in myself, most definitely. The players are giving me everything they can.

"You could see that against Fulham.

"A lot of my chat to them is that you don't feel sorry for yourselves - that's for losers. I don't and I don't expect them to."